We’re travelling back home today, but not until late afternoon. We left the house at 10, drove to Selfoss (not much ‘foss’ to see there), stopped for lunch at Thorshövn, went to the Blue Lagoon via a spectacular coast road across old lava fields.

The blue lagoon was a nice, relaxing break. It’s a beautiful place, a bit busy but so nice once in the water. Expensive as well, but kids get free entrance. We stayed over two hours, tried all sauna and steam bath. The weather was nice, cold but it didn’t matter.

We then said goodbye to our cousins and went to catch our flight back to Oslo.

Hugo and I started the day with a hike along the neighboring creek, we saw plenty of small waterfalls.

Then magic happened, and suddenly there were chocolate eggs all around the garden, which the kids volunteered to pick up.

Once all the chocolates were found and tasted, we drove to the ‘Lava center’, in Hvolsvöllur, a nice center with movies and a fully interactive exhibition about Islandic volcanism.

For lunch, we went to Tumastadir, a nice waterfall a bit away from the classic routes.

We went to Hvolsvöllur’s outdoor swimming pool (but heated), spent 2 hours there – not a tourist in sight, it seemed like a very icelandic thing to do on a Sunday. We headed back home, with a stop at Gluggafoss and Sjelyalandfoss, two distinct waterfalls that share one characteristic: one can walk behind them.

Foss means waterfall. It’s the same in norwegian. We can understand a lot of the names here, as they share the same roots as norwegian: foss, vik, myr, dahl. The main difference between the two languages: the declination in four genders. So, we can understand written icelandic if we spend a bit of time, but that’s it.

The plan for the day was to take the boat to the Heimaey islands, but… there was no ferry service. We drove to Vik instead, along the beautiful southern coast.

First stop was at the Skogafoss waterfall, we then went to Vik i Myrdal to fill up with groceries (including Easter chocolates) for the coming days. We had lunch at the Reynisfjara beach, where furious sea waves carve cliffs in the dark basaltic rock.

Last stop of the day was the Sólheimajökul, a glacier reachable after a short walk – good because at that point it was heavily raining.

We’re leaving Borgarnes, to the kids’ despair. They were in the barn even before the farmer to feed the animals and to say good bye.

The plan was to drive to the southern coast via the Golden Circle. The weather was not very engaging, but there wasn’t much other options.

We stopped at Thingvellir, place of one of the world’s oldest parliament. Where people would gather once a year is also a place where tectonic plates drift appart. Thingvellir is located at the middle of the medio-atlantic ridge. We went to see the spectacular alignments of faults in the basalt on the ‘american’ side, walked down to the lögberg (where the law was proclaimed).

We continued our trip to Geysir. We were met by heavy rain, so didn’t stay long. Fortunately the main geyser, Strokkur, was very active with an eruption every 5 minutes, so we didn’t have to wait long.

Finally, we reached Gullfoss, a spectacular waterfall.

We left the Golden Circle completely wet, but saw blue sky and a warm sun when we reached the southern coast. Finally!

After breakfast we went to the barn with the kids. They have ship, goats, rabbits, horses and cows. The girls took care of a sick rabbit that died soon after. The boys played with the goats and did some archery. I met Francois, the owner, and his helper Merith, and got to know their history and the history of the farm.

For the rest of the day, we had to adapt our plan to the weather. Instead of the Snefællnes peninsula, we went inland, first to Barnafossar and Hraunfossar. The first one is a classic waterfall, the second one more surprising as the water falls from the sides of the river. We walked on basaltic rocks where we could see the lava hardening pattern in form of small folds. We then drove to Geitlandsjökull glacier, and stopped at the swimming pool in Husafell on the way back, to enjoy the warm spring water of Iceland.

We came back home in the afternoon, the kids went to the barn again – best place ever according to Timothé.

We went for a short trip downtown Reykjavik after breakfast, but the rain was heavy – a short 10min walk got us completely wet. Time for a museum!

We visited Perlan, a nice museum about Iceland’s nature and geological history. The kids loved it. We watched a beautiful movie in the planetarium with spectacular images of northern lights, went inside a glacier, ate lunch with a nice view over the city.

Mid afternoon, we headed towards Borgarnes, north of Reykjavik. We understood on the way that our accommodation had been double-booked. Fortunately the owner quickly found us another solution, in a farm near the shore. The kids spent some time with the owners and the animals of the farm. After diner, we went for a walk along a few beautiful beaches covered with black sand.